Wood finishing forum for professional finishers

In addition to playing with my new gopro and evo stabilizer I wanted to post a video of the use of polyurethanes on cabinetry, the automotive grade urethane is the way to go if you want the toughest of finishes that will never yellow. In this video shot in the Thomas Craven Wood finishing studios in Van Nuys California, Tom had a residential customer that wanted the best of the best and commercial grade finish, we are using a PLC automotive urethane that you can buy from Annex paint, (I’ll get that product up on he web site) roughly the materials shown with the reducer were about $150.00. the gallon of material, the quart of activator and the gallon of reducer. That’s 4 X what you would pay for a similar amount of Pre Cat lacquer and two to three times what you would pay for a conversion varnish. The walnut paneling had a stain and color treatment which was sealed with a CIC vinyl sealer after which it received the treatment you see in the video.

For note, I didn’t edit out any of the spraying footage to shorten the video length. what you see is three coats of material apply in rapid succession. the length of the video is how long it took to apply. After spending a few days curing from that application it is installed.

Another thing to note here, is the application of the “FOG” coat as its called the first of the three applications, as show you are barely covering the surface.

For Reference, the term, “Flash off” is used to refer to letting the faster evaporating solvents evaporate. Solvents in coatings are staged and timed. the faster evaporating solvents allow the materials to flow out nicely and level out. the slower solvents allow the resins to harden properly. like concrete there are stages to drying and curing.

Do you need that much protection in your home? Most likely not. I would generally recommend this product for and exterior application, front doors, fancy wooden garage doors and the like. Or in commercial establishments, bar and table tops of restaurant dining tables. A big family with young kids, over worked parents and no maid? might not be a bad Idea… Smuckers Jelly if left on the minimally finished pre-cat cabinet door will soften the finish if left on for a few days. I was told by a 4 year old authority on the matter that finger painting with Jelly was really fun. who Knew…

Feel free to post comments I’ll try to answer them, you are welcome to email me if you have immediate questions you can visit the annex web http://www.annexpaint.com site for purchasing these products.

He has 6 short videos in all which are very concise and to the point, clearly covering the points of proper prep and application for doing a professional paint Job.

After proper preparation they applied 4 coats of pinnacle polyprimer from Ellis paint. applied in two applications, sanding in-between coats. This gave him and exceptionally hard finish that was very smooth,

Probably one of the most common mistakes of beginning finishers and professionals alike is applying too much paint too quickly, for the sake of speed they whammer on two heavy coats and walk away only to have it bubble or crack on them later. When the first coat doesn’t have a chance to dry properly and then is covered over by successive coats the later layers will dry quicker and harden, then when the earliest layer finally dries a week or two later it will shrink, the later coats already dry and unable to contract will be pulled together and will crack.

The best practice is sneak up on a high build by successive light to medium coats

The videos are all linked together, there are two introductory videos which go over the project and the prep following that you have two more short videos of the spray applications

After that they applied the polyprimer they applied a flat Clear Conversion Varnish. Conversion varnish is a catalyzed coating which is very hard and durable. CIC coatings is the brand of Conversion varnish being used, I’m very fond of this this particular product as it has been specially formulated to be applied right out of the can with out thinning or retarding, it lays out incredibly smooth and dries quickly.

These products can be obtained through my store Annex Paint in Reseda California If you have any questions about these products feel free to contact me.

Greg Saunders 818-439-9297

If you are interested in having a specialty coating on your furniture contact Thomas Craven at the above web site.

The subject of how to get that full grain filled high gloss / high polished look without over building a lacquer to the point that it cracks has come up from time to time. I recently had a customer who builds and finishes custom walnut tables to a mirror finish that are gorgeous beyond belief have a serious fracturing issue. He had been building up pre-catalyzed lacquer beyond what the manufacture recommended. While this had worked well in the short term, cracks and fracturing of the finish began showing up after a few months.

The best solution I have found for this problem is the use of polyester sanding sealer. This is a great system however it is not something that should be attempted by someone new to the business of furniture finishing as there are three components to mix and if not done right will never dry. Eight to twelve mils of this material may be applied in one application to fill wood grain and or pores and it won’t crack and fracture like lacquers and conversion varnishes do. This is the finish used on pianos. Once you have applied enough polyester sanding sealer to fill the wood grain and pores you can then block sand it smooth and flat. You can then go straight to final sanding and polish if you wish. This would provide the hardest most durable finish. However, polyester does turn yellow over time. An alternative is to top coat the polyester with non yellowing lacquer or high grade two part polyurethane like the Pinnacle brand we have sold for years now. This polyurethane has UV inhibitors added to it to slow the effects of yellowing that are typical of polyurethanes.

Thomas Craven has been a finisher in the valley for many years and has consistently produced excellent products. He and his team have mastered the Polyester/ Polyurethane finish as you can see in this video. You can reach Thomas Craven through his web site at: http://www.TCWoodFinishers.com

If you are interested in purchasing these products you can contact me through the Annex Paint Store web site at: http://www.annexpaint.com

For years I have been asking for a clear grain filler and for the years I have been looking the only true Clear grain filler I found was an Ultra Violet cured product, while a great product it was out of realm of the regular cabinet guy. Then CIC came up with this product that is all the things I was looking for. It is water based and dries quickly, ( all water based products are temperature and humidity sensitive) This is a product that I have wanted to get a demo video up on for some time.
My wife wanted a simple black box that she was going to put in a closet, it wasn’t going to be seen that much and so didn’t have to be fancy, I had some salvaged oak ply in the shed and so decided to make it out of that. then I had the idea to use the water based grain filler on it to spruce it up and have something for the blog, Long story short I spent way more time doing the finishing on something that is going into the Closet than I should have. that being said I home video is of some value to any one interested in the product.

About the Product:
It is water based and comes in a can it is thick and has the consistency of seriously thick ketchup or bril-cream hair gel (that dates me). You apply it with a spreader or wide putty knife. you don’t want a build you want to spread it around and fill grain any extra you have on the surface, you’ll have to sand off and it gets hard. Lay it on, let it dry and sand all the excess off. This is not a top coat it is not a coating it is a filler so you have to sand down to the wood, depending on the dept of the grain yo may have to do the process again and sand again. once you have filled the grain you can apply your sealer and top coat. SO far I have only used this with water based top coats I have not tried it under a solvent lacquer. should work fine I just haven’t tried that one. the one thing that I would say about that would be that you would want to be very dry first other wise any water/moisture off gassing is going to blush your clear coat.

The other question is at what point do you stain, That the tricky part IF you stain first and you are then sanding down to the wood you are inevitably going to be sanding into your stain. IF you sand afterword you stain in not going to penetrate well. The Trick is when you have filled the grain then sand down deep enough so that you are sanding wood. In other words, if the wood was the land and mountains and the valleys and gorges were the depth of the grain then you would want to sand down to the point that you were cutting the tops of the mountains off. And then apply your stain. If you haven’t sanded that down evenly then your stain coating is going to be uneven.

following this I’ll have a few other video demos of spraying the Black CIC water based Conversion coating on where you see the difference that the grain fill makes.

I thought I had said more on this subject of heating your coatings for better results and perhaps I have, but now time has gone by and the data has been buried somewhere over the years in some article somewhere in my Blog making it not all that useful.

Let me get to the point; when you raise th temperature of your coating, be it water based or solvent you are reducing the viscosity or thickness of the materials. With in a certain range of temperature for every 10 degrees warmer you make your lacquer (be it water based solvent or urethane) you will make your product 10% thinner. The great aspect about that is that you are not reducing the volume of solids.

If you thin a coating 50% you’ll have to put on twice the number of coats to achieve the same build. Here in America the labor is your most expensive commodity. Now if you can raise the temperature of the materials 50 degrees you achieve that same amount if thinning but you would do it with out adding the solvents that will evaporate out and leaving your coating behind.

But that’s not all! In addition to the above the coatings you lay out will flow out better and dry faster. And you can do it with out the expence of Lacquer thinners which are getting expensive.

There are several things you can do to use this data, the easiest is to take your pails off the concrete floor and put them up on wood blocks if nothing else. I have had contractors wrap a heating blankets around their pails and warm their lacquer up that way. I have even seen finishers put water based lacquers in the Micro wave and warm it up.

Intelligence needs to be used, especially when dealing with flammable materials. Making your materials warmer is the key but I wouldn’t go past the point of heating materials beyond warm to the touch. you can stick your finger in and its warm to the touch Body temperature is 98 degrees so I would say no more than about 104 degrees. Obviously if your boil your materials you are going to be changing chemical properties. Again, some intelligence please.

With duel component materials you are going to be shortening the pot life. Gradients and testing are key here. I’m a big fan of pushing something to see where their fail point is but not on a customers cabinets, when you are at that point you should have all your procedures all figured out.

Ok, the basics covered, here are two Video demo’s of Jody Toole using the Kremlin Air-assisted airless spray rig with the new Excite spray gun and the Kremlin materials heater. Jody is a professional finisher in the Southern California area, if you are interested in contacting him you can reach him through his blog at: http://jodytoole.wordpress.com/

In the first clip he is using the rig and in the second he is telling some of the benefits of the whole system.

And here is the second video Jody describing some of the attributes of the Rig and his review :

For note: the Lacquer that we are applying here is the CIC Coatings Acrylic lacquer I have said so much about int he past.

Annex Paint sells the Kremlin air assisted airless and all of its sundries including the heater. If you are in the southern california area and would like a Demo please feel free to contact me.

I have a customer who loves the CIC TL acrylic lacquer, while I was in his shop the other day he showed me the results of a scientific study he was performing with the product, I was so impressed I videoed the test.

The Finisher is Jody Toole and he operates in the LA area doing custom wood finishing if you are interested in contacting him here is a link to his blog: http://jodytoole.wordpress.com/

The Centurion Acrylic lacquer is a low VOC acrylic lacquer. Acrylics are different than nitrocellulose lacquers, a little more expensive but far superior, they are harder and don’t yellow, as well it is self sealing and they don’t smell as bad when you are spraying them out. This particular product is and advanced Hybrid of what was referred to as a “Cab Acrylic”, the old cab acrylic were very clear didn’t yellow but were relatively soft. the TL series is very hard.

As you’ll see in the short video Jody had his Starbucks cold drink plastic cups on a walnut panel he has finished 6 months ago. He has placed his cups on the panel every day for the last 6 months, as you can see there is not water damage, I love it when I get impressed with my own products. If you are interested in purchasing this product please feel free to contact me Greg Saunders Annex paint at: greg@annexpaint.com

I’m going to have to make a new category for this one as it is not something I have covered before, but the process was so unique and produced such a cool effect I decided that I had to record it.

Using gold leaf or gold power in paint and clear coats has been around for some time but what Thomas Craven has done is used the gold powder in a Pinnacle polyester resin stippled on with a natural sponge and then clear coated with the clear polyester. The effect is a multi layered effect that gives the finish a depth that is very attractive. See for your self .

This is a phenomenal spray gun that I have previously not paid enough attention to. The great benefit of this tool is the increased transfer efficiency or percentage of materials which are making it to the target. With conventional airless you have about a 60% efficiency meaning that you have lost as much as 40% of your paint to the atmosphere and or your spray booth filters. With the Air-assisted airless the transfer efficiency is about 85 % so you are wasting 25% less of your paint. This would mean that for every 100 dollar pail of lacquer you are buying you are saving about 20 to 25 dollars. That is a savings that can quickly add up and pay for the rig.

In-essence it is pumping the paint out with an airless pump but it uses two opposing streams of air to atomize the paint much like a cup or gravity feed spray gun. With the combination of the air, less pressure is needed to get the paint out and so more of your paint goes on the thing you are painting and less of your paint bounces off the surface and into the air.

The other benefit is that is applies the materials with less force and so give you a smoother finish, in the following video Jody Toole has been using an airless sprayer but was having some troubles with bubbling on the first coat, this was being caused by too much pressure resulting in the materials foaming when they impacted with the surface of the panel. he solved this by backing down the pressure and holding his gun further away, while that solved the bubbling it gave and even lower transfer efficiency and the material did not flow out as well. With the Kremlin all these issues were resolved.

The cost of the whole rig is about 2700 bucks and that is a little pricy but depending on how muc you spray you’ll have paid for it in savings on materials, which by the way are getting more expensive by the day with rising gas prices.

For note: Jody is spraying the CIC low VOC acrylic lacquer which is, in essence a cab acrylic on steroids for those of you that may have used such a thing in the past, it is 160 gr/lt. VOC, it is low odor and it won’t yellow. This is the same product featured elsewhere on the blog that the Church of Scientology’s new Los Angeles and Pasadena church furniture are coated in.

I sell the Kremlin so if you are in my neighborhood call me and we can get together for a demo if not you can look them up on-line and find the nearest dealer. There are other companies that have air assisted air less equipment as well.

Since this article Jody has gone off and done a few more video demos and so I though I would add them to this posting so that you could see some other demonstrations of the rig.

I had a contractor ask me the question is the conversion coating flammable as he was going to finish a wine cellar in a basement where there was a gas burning furnace. Normally when spraying lacquers on a job site you want to make sure that all open flames are extinguished Vapors sometimes being heaver then air can sprayed along the ground to a gas burning water heater and go boom –not good. Matt the contractor wanted to find a water based material that would not have this problem and was interested in the Rexcel conversion coating the following is my response …

“The materials are not flammable However, they are potentially combustible, you should always spray in an area that is properly ventilated and I would, if at all possible turn off the furnace while spraying. Inert dust, such as saw dust or even flower can become explosive all by itself if there is a sufficient quantity of in suspended in the air. Like wise with a sealed room full of over spray and vapor.

The Rexcel conversion coating is water based but it does have volatile chemicals in it. If for some reason you can’t turn off the furnace then ventilate the room so that your fumes are being sucked out of the room and not into the furnace.”

All that being said I doubt you would have a problem, but I don’t want to be the on that gets you blown up. What I have done personally in the past when confronted with such situations is to erect a temporary spay booth around the work with Plastic and 2X2s or something similar. Tape it to the ceiling and floor, Home depot sells zippers that you can tape on to the plastic and use as an entry and exit. Then I would duct in (either with plastic or flex dusting you can also find at home depot) and air supply and an exhaust, I have built some pretty spiffy spray booths in some real swanky homes where the customers did not want to spell lacquers. You can put a A/C air filter on the exhaust side to catch particles before it goes out a window.

I thought I would post an Email that was sent to me with a very valid question. Water Based polyurethanes versus Solvent conversion Varnish. Which is harder which is better?

Hello,

I am in the process of building some pantry cabinets for my shore house. I want to achieve a nice solid white finish. What would you recommend. I was thinking a white tinted conversion varnish applied w/ a hvlp conversion gun. Any other suggestions. I just need it to be more durable than paint. My other option was to paint then apply a waterborne polyurethane coating.

MR B.

Here is my response and answer to the question

Hi Mr. B,

You have several options. But what I would recommend is the water born poly or similar product. The conversion vanish is great stuff but is very tough on both the people who spray it and your equipment. The acid catalysis is rough on a body, if you do use it get a spray suit with a hood and wear a respirator. It does produce an incredible finish and fast. On the up side to the conversion varnish it is slightly clearer, but you are not doing a clear over a wood stain so that wouldn’t be a significant issue.

The down sides to the waterborne poly is it is a little trickier to spray and requires a larger tip size usually 1.7mm or bigger and you may need to experiment around first to get it to lay down smoothly, you may require a certain amount of retarder so that it will lay out smoothly, 3% is all you would want to add after that it will take forever to dry and will compromise the hardness. Once you have your solution dialed in its pretty simple.

I would get a good white primer on first otherwise you will be putting on more coats of the poly that you really need and they are harder to sand. Ellis 1262 water based white primer is a great one. Ellis is however a La company I don’t know where you are. Dunn Edwards and Sherman Williams both make decent primers; a good primer will save you time and money. Get the surface as smooth as you can with the primer then two top coats and you are done.

Don’t get a water based poly from Home depot or Lowes the “Minwax” polyurethane they sell isn’t that good and doesn’t do that well. I would get something used by professionals, Renner is what I sell and I love the stuff this is an Italian manufactured material. Of course there are others that are very good as well. “General Finishes” have a few.

I have an incredible product that I really like that is somewhere in-between a water based poly and a Conversion varnish. It is manufactured especially for us by a company called Rexcel I have mention of it on my Blog. If you go to the Blog you can see the Rexcel listings I have there as well as the test I am running with the material. I have three panels I shot my self that are in my shower getting wet daily. So far they have been there a month and show no signs of water damage.

Anyway, that product is interior/exterior and harder than hell, you can also buff it to a mirror finish and is only about 54 bucks a gallon if you are interested in having some shipped. We can do that. We have it white I believe, the one thing about white is there are several whites so you might want to do some testing first. You can also send us a color sample and we can match it. If you do that you have to provide a board with the color of your choosing that is at least 6”X6” that way we’ll have some thing to work with.

Let me know what you decide and how it all comes out. If you are interested send some pictures with a little write up and I’ll post it on the Blog. There is currently one posting from a guy that did his own kitchen with a water base lacquer and it turned out great. You should read that one as well as there are a few tips in there that are Key. One of which is the fact that all water base materials take longer to dry and longer to Cure. You have to let them cure for a few weeks before they get really hard. You can install them after a day or two but be very gentle with it for at least a week. The Conversion Varnish goes hard with a chemical reaction and will continue to cure for days and weeks but will get harder faster than the water based materials that cure at the rate of water evaporating. That by the way is determined by temperature and relative humidity. You can force dry then with heat and air flow but don’t cook them.